This is our tree (and it's a beautiful tree)
by waywardcherry
Summary: It's their moment, but it's Rachel making it happen for all of them. She tries to hide a sniffle as Rachel sits there, cross-legged, looking happier than she's ever seen her.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: **This story is based on this picture prompt (santana-lopez LJ 6320 html ?thread=1211568#t1211568) and hurricane Sandy in general. It's slightly AU because they are about 10 years older than they are right now. Everything else remains the same.

..

1.

Santana limps into the bedroom and faceplants on the bed, having spent most of her Sunday afternoon hopping about with a sprained ankle (momentary distraction on the treadmill—don't ask) barricading the windows and getting rid of perishables. If it were up to her, she'd have just eaten the stock of Ben & Jerry's and to hell with the rest (there's this awesome _Tales From The Crypt_ marathon that she can watch until the lights eventually go out), the trash chute is right down the hall if things start to smell. But of course, Rachel would have her head if she just decided to disregard Sandy so completely like that.

_Sandy_. Rachel's been referring to the hurricane like it's an actual person, to the point of attributing female pronouns and not wanting to make 'her' mad.

Sometimes she thinks she married a fucking lunatic.

(She _did_. And she wouldn't have it any other way.)

She barely cranes her neck to the side when she hears the front door open abruptly and then slam shut, amidst some muffled bickering. Or maybe chirped chatting. You can never tell with Rachel. There's the ruffle of bags and she remembers the Milky Way bars she asked them to pick up and her mouth actually waters. Maybe she'll have to move to get there. Maybe she'll—"Ow!" Her thought process gets halted when she gets whacked in the head with something inside a paper bag. She sits up, massaging the back of her neck and faces Rachel, dressed in her Halloween finest: black and orange striped sweater, gray scarf with tiny embroidered skulls, hands set on her hips and a positively scary look on her face.

"It is _madness_ out there!"

"Then you must've felt right at home," she mutters.

Rachel rolls her eyes for a millisecond and continues. "People are stocking up for the apocalypse! I could barely get to the soy section and this neanderthal nearly elbowed me in the ear."

"So you ran into Finn?"

"You're _not_ being funny, Santana."

"That's what you get for nearly knocking me unconscious with this," she waves the paper bag in the air to make her point.

Rachel sighs and runs a hand through her hair. "Sorry, I'm still a little jittery, it was very stressful."

Sympathy works its way through her brain and she holds Rachel's hand while she tries to calm herself down. Then Santana grabs the bag and kneels down at the edge of the bed in front of her wife with a smile. "Is this what I think it is?"

Before Rachel can reply, Sam walks into the room and throws her another bag. She's less startled this time, but people have _got_ to stop throwing shit at her. "No, _this_ is," he says and she notices he's just about as edgy as Rachel. Sure enough, Sam's bag has her candy and it really doesn't bother her that he just walked in, they're all pretty much past the point of propriety and common courtesy such as _knocking_. He lives across the hall with his girlfriend Ellie, but they might as well just gate the hallway and claim that section as their own. "The other one has—"

"Yes, it has—" Rachel continues and runs her hand nervously along the arm Santana has around her waist. She suddenly feels like a frog has lodged itself in her throat and all she can say is, "_Oh_." This is the moment, isn't it? In the middle of this insanity, she sent her possibly-pregnant wife to gather supplies while she sat pretty contemplating which flavor of ice cream she would eat first. Granted, she could blame her own blaring stupidity for answering her phone on a _treadmill_ (it threw her off-balance, _it happens_) and Sam was with Rachel the whole time—after all, he had a part in it. Not just providing his share of enormously-mouthed genes, but as an actual parent in this crazy unit they learned to call family. Something occurs to her. "Where's Ellie?"

"She's calling her folks, said she'd be back when we're… done."

Santana wants to hug the shit out of the woman. This is their moment after all. Which is why she needs to try and leap out of bed to get this thing going. Rachel sees her struggling a little and helps her stand up. "Okay. Baby, how many gallons of Gatorade have you had?"

"Two bottles of the Fruit Punch. I'm about to burst, actually."

She's not sure who's holding the other up at this point. Sam keeps chewing on his bottom lip, then suddenly splays his hands up in the air, "So are we doing this? Rachel needs to _go_."

Santana snorts and puts the bag on her wife's hand, pulling her face closer. Rachel smiles faintly, "Don't say anything crass right now." She'd take offense in that if it weren't for the butterflies flapping about in her stomach.

"Knock 'em dead," and she kisses Rachel soundly and she can _feel_ her rolling her eyes.

"Oh my _God_," she mumbles on her way to the bathroom, after a hug from Sam.

It's been a few minutes of her and Sam sitting side by side at the edge of the bed, staring at nothing, basically. She'd pace around, but that pesky ankle brace is there as a reminder every time she tries to get up. The frog hasn't moved and she's pretty sure the butterflies have now been joined by a slew of other insects. Another minute and she'll make Sam give her a piggyback ride to the bathroom door to check if Rachel's even still _alive_—it's not like her to go this long without uttering a word. Thankfully, the door flies open and she turns her head in tandem with Sam. Rachel's an actress and they had this whole thing where Santana would say she'd kill her if Rachel dared to pretend it didn't take only to surprise them a few seconds later, and, as it turns out, she can't act her way through this. She's already crying, sporting the largest smile she's ever seen on anyone.

Sam jumps up and Santana can't really feel her legs. This is surreal. And apparently, her reaction was expected judging by the way Rachel straddles her and starts crying into her neck, telling her to breathe in-between sobs and giggles. She's a mess and Sam's eyes are red and, okay, so maybe Rachel's smile wasn't the biggest she's ever seen—she constantly underestimates Sam's humongous trap. She hopes to all deities she won't see that on their kid for the sake of Rachel's boobs.

She hears the words 'camera' and 'picture' and 'yes' and she's suddenly being dismounted, slowly coming out of her stupor. And nothing better to snap her out of it than a pregnancy test being shoved in her direction. "The fuck, Rachel?"

"We need to hold it for the picture!"

"No way, you peed on that."

"Santana," she whines.

She manages to stand on one leg and moves next to Sam, holding his phone up. "No, this—this is _your_ picture." It's their moment, but it's _Rachel_ making it happen for all of them. She tries to hide a sniffle as Rachel sits there, cross-legged, looking happier than she's ever seen her.

"Don't cry," Sam chuckles as he focuses the camera.

"I'm not crying," she says, and she knows she's not convincing anyone here. And that's really, really okay.

..

2.

So they broke Rachel.

It may have taken them seven months, but they did it. They'd all thought Rachel would be eager to find out the sex of the baby and name the kid something ridiculous from a musical that would just sound better on a fucking cat, but she surprised them all by holding it off as long as she did. She said she had plans and no, they didn't involve musicals. "Maybe in a roundabout way," she said at one point. Now she's lounging on the couch with her feet on Santana's lap, being handed the iced tea Ellie made for the two of them, with this dopey grin on her face.

"I don't know what the fuss is all about," Santana says, "you would've had the same reaction if it had been a boy."

Sam eases back on the armchair with a beer. "Says the woman who blubbered all over my shirt for the very same reason."

"Oh, shut up, guppy."

Rachel sighs, all happy and relaxed. "I admittedly had my hopes up for a girl because I know exactly what to name her. Though it might've worked on a boy as well. As a nickname, probably."

Oh lord. It's okay, she's ready. She just hopes she doesn't look or sound as panicked as she's feeling at this moment. "And what's that?"

"Sandy," and she's smiling as if she's saying _You're welcome._

Santana's suddenly livid. "You have got to be fucking _kidding_ me."

Sam holds his hand up. "Santana, don't curse in front of the—Sandy."

"_The baby_ can't hear shit," she places both of Rachel's feet back on a sofa cushion and stands. "We agreed on no stupid musical names!"

Rachel furrows her brow and sits up, "Well, it's… not?"

Ellie gets this faraway look. "Isn't that from _Grease_?" And Santana motions her hands toward her general direction because at least _someone_'s on her side. (How the hell they're gonna get through threeway parenting if things are starting off like this, she just has no clue.) "Yeah, Danny, Pink Ladies. Yep. _Grease_."

"But that's not what I was going for!"

"Rach, I like it," Sam moves to sit on the arm of the couch, placing a gentle hand on Rachel's back. _Judas_. She's surrounded by traitors. "You have my support if you feel strongly about Sandy." Rachel looks up at him with these big, grateful eyes and she just wants to slap them both.

"Excuse me," she almost yells, "Ellie, help me out here!"

She raises both her hands. "Hey, I'm not a parent here, it's not my kid. I'm just the eventual stepmom." However, she turns to Rachel and Sam and shrugs. "It's a musical name."

Santana wouldn't hand over this kind of power to just anyone, maybe not even Brittany. Ellie's been with Sam about five years and a fixture in their lives since Rachel started NYADA, and the woman's so damn chill and mature about their situation it's hard to even conjure up appropriate insults, even when she deserves them. And sometimes Santana needs a sane presence when both her wife and her best friend are freaking out about vitamins and herb pillows. They'll need to have a beer after this damn talk is over.

She tries to conjure up every smidgen of patience she has left on her body and turns back to Rachel and Sam. "Baby," she takes a deep breath, "what's the story?"

"Well, now that apparently you've calmed down, I can clarify my point. The night we found out I was pregnant was the beginning of a very significant event in our time, which just happened to be—"

Santana pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes. "Please don't tell me you're naming our kid after a hurricane."

"Rachel!" Sam yelps, like it's really offensive. And, well, it_ is_. Now he's on _her_ team on account of decency. It feels awesome to be right, but she has to get past being horrified and maybe try to rectify her wife's pregnancy-addled brain.

"You're missing the point here! It's the meaning, the _significance_."

"Yeah, tell that to New Jersey, Berry."

"Lopez."

"What?"

"Berry-Lopez. You forgot."

Damn it. She can't smile, she _cannot _smile right now. But it's working its way to her lips and she clamps her mouth shut. She realizes she's lost when Rachel bites her bottom lip to disguise a giggle. But shit, she really does hate the name Sandy. It just reminds her of Spongebob. She tries another tactic. "Baby, this girl's gonna be raised by us. You _know_ us. Do you really think she needs the added association to a freaking hurricane?"

Rachel sighs deeply and Sam kind of has been watching this like a tennis match (despite their arrangement, he knows when to butt out). It's like Rachel's trying to reason a counterargument when Ellie perks up and squeaks, "Olivia! Like, Newton-John, Olivia!"

Three sets of eyes turn to her like they've been baffled into silence. Ellie's face, however, is still lit up like she just solved a massive problem. Which…

"You know—"

"Actually, that's—"

"_Liv_, that's so pretty—"

"Yeah, I like that."

And they continue to stare at Ellie in amazement. There's no way this woman doesn't deserve a beer right now. As she's making her way to the fridge, Rachel gets up and fishes out her phone. "Ellie, could you—do something for me?"

"Sure."

Santana smiles as they make their way to the bedroom and laughs when Sam slumps behind her in a bear hug. Her heart does this funny thing where she wants to turn around and lean into him. So she just does. "Thank you."

"What for?"

"Everything," she sniffles. "_Dork_," she completes, just to keep things familiar.

..

3.

Santana rubs her eyes as the light filtering through the curtains has been kind of bothering her for a while. A little over an hour. Laziness is a funny thing. Actually, she's just about exhausted every ounce of energy left in her trying to get Liv to sleep. Then she just watched her baby until she felt her eyes start to burn and, okay, maybe she needed sleep. But it's kind of impossible not to stare at that child.

Looking around and adjusting her eyes to the light, she finds out she's not alone. She can see Rachel's back a little further down the bed, a little hunched down and the little fist peeking out from the other side gives Santana a pretty good idea about what's happening. See, _impossible_.

She stretches a bit and crawls down to where her wife is. Rachel gives her the sweetest of glances and says, "Hey, sleepyhead."

Santana kisses her shoulder and rests her chin there, looking down at Olivia. "It's barely 8, babe."

"We've been up since 6, we win."

She huffs a little tiredly. "What's for breakfast?"

"I haven't had any yet, I was waiting for you. I just fed Liv and—" She can actually see Rachel blushing as she trails off.

"You've been sitting here this whole time, haven't you?"

"Maybe?"

"Freak."

"Okay, now you _really_ can't say stuff like that. She's here," Rachel says and turns back to Liv. "She's really here," she adds softly.

And yeah, sometimes it's really kind of baffling how she's here, with them, being shuffled around in this surprisingly well-oiled machine that is their family. Sometimes she pities the kid for getting the longest name in existence, but Olivia Ellen Evans Berry-Lopez packs a punch and she's fucking proud of how it all came together. How well they work. (And Liv's adorable pouty lips will now _forever _contribute to her supply of jokes, no matter how much—and how long and how_ loudly_—Rachel protests.)

The three of them sit there in silence, just being, when a familiar noise grows a little louder outside. She feels Rachel smile against her cheek. "She's been here six days, but it's like the rain is a final blessing or something."

It's the first time a Sandy reference doesn't bother her. It's just the way Rachel's sitting here, looking at their child in complete adoration that makes Santana understand. It's evolution and it's growth and it's their love, right here.

Rachel doesn't even notice when Santana gets up and takes the most beautiful picture she's ever seen.


	2. Chapter 2

This is a ficlet for Day 4 of Pezberry Week on Tumblr.

..

Marius dies on Thanksgiving.

It's utter chaos. The pitfalls of their parenting choice, Santana believes. Nobody really knows what to do. Hiram is holding a therapy session with Rachel on the living room couch and Sam on speaker phone (he's with Ellie's family in California); they can't understand why Liv feels like she's lost a family member in that strange tabby they rescued three years ago, but won't acknowledge her baby sister at all. Leroy keeps going back and forth to the kitchen to keep them all fed and sits on Rachel's other side from time to time so she can snuggle between her dads. And seriously, she looks sixteen right now, so small, hugging her legs to her chest and sniffling quietly between her knees while Hiram speaks.

Santana looks out the window and Liv is still sitting on the lawn, next to a bit or revolved earth under a small pile of rocks. She has her hands to herself and looks at the street; she's been out there long enough for Santana to get worried—not about her state of mind, it's a _dead pet_, she'll get over it. It's the bitter cold and the snow that's starting to fall. She adjusts the fluffy frog hat on Lucy's head (somebody had to mind the baby while the rest of the family talks about how she's being ignored, irony of ironies) and snuggles her closer. "First rescue mission, kid," Santana says into her daughter's hair—she's got so much of it, brown curls spill out of the hat and she's only six months old.

It seems like Liv hears the screen door, because she gives the smallest sideway glance and resumes her previous position. It's almost imperceptible. When Santana approaches, Liv picks up one of the rocks from the grave and looks down at it. Her cheeks are red, but Santana can't tell if it's from the cold or just crying. "Baby, you have to come inside and eat something."

"I'm not hungry," she mumbles. Usually she'd ramble on about a reason _why_, she's pretty eloquent for a 4-year-old, but she can tell it's upsetting her way too much when she shuts down like this. Santana sets a timeframe in her mind and sits down next to Liv—there's only so much drama a kid can make before she gets frostbite on her parents' watch.

"I'm sorry he died," she says softly and struggles a little to continue. She's not _that_ sorry, she hated that beast and he only seemed to like Liv. Well, live and learn; get your kid a pet and watch it pee on everything you love (including _Rachel_ one time). "But it's getting really cold out here and you need to be _alive_ to visit abuela's later."

The look she gets from her kid is one of absolute horror and she immediately regrets it. _Too soon_. She doesn't know if Lucy can sense the tension, but she chooses this moment where Liv is about to curse Santana's whole existence to swivel around on her lap and grab the rock from Liv's hand. And when she thinks things are about to get uglier (Luce, bad, _bad_timing), her daughters share a look that softens Liv's expression and holds Lucy's attention like nothing else ever did. There's some serious, unprecedented bonding happening here and she just wants to scream at Rachel to come witness it. Instead, she just watches.

..

It falls on her and Leroy to feed, bathe and put the girls to bed—one of them being _Rachel_, who's being the most stubborn of them all. It's like she's trying to match Liv's sulking. She refused to eat and is now in bed, staring at the ceiling (at least she agreed to take a shower). "Babe."

Rachel makes an acknowledgment sound. Oh, for the love of god.

"Rachel, you'd better get out of this by tomorrow morning, because we didn't go to my mother's house tonight and it's your fault that I'm gonna sit through two hours of her ranting in Spanish because I disrespected a sacred tradition. She's not even american, it can't be_that_ important to her," she says and she realizes she's started to vent. It's been a very long day.

"I just don't understand how we managed to raise two daughters who hate each other."

"Lucy doesn't _hate_ anything, she barely even hates peas. And you know Liv doesn't like anything but animals and Netflix, she even calls Dora the Explorer on her shit, give her time."

"It's been six months, Santana!"

"Yet you're still hormonal as fuck, what does that tell you?"

Rachel pouts and crosses her arms against her chest. "Fine. But I'm not insane, little girls tend to like their little siblings, I've always wanted one, what's wrong with our kid?"

Santana doesn't know how much longer she can endure this conversation they've had a million times without launching a throw pillow across the room and into her wife's face, so she just shakes her head and steps out into the hallway to check on the girls in the guest bedroom. Everything is dark except for a bedside lamp in the room; she's sure the nightlight was the only thing she left on when she tucked them in, so she peeks into the doorway to find Liv's bed mussed and empty. She soon finds the kid inside the crib, sitting cross-legged at Lucy's feet and playing with the seams of a stuffed giraffe. The baby was asleep when Santana left, but she's now quietly looking up at her sister.

"I'm sorry, Sophie," she says, using Lucy's first name; nobody ever does that, not really. Rachel wanted to keep a tradition of Broadway related names, but left the choice up to Sam and Santana this time. _Mamma Mia!_ was the only show besides _Rocky Horror_ that Sam had seen, and Santana vetoed every name on that one by principle. Besides, they both liked that their family was as unconventional as the one Meryl Streep built (Sam's words, not hers). They were all set to go when Rachel went into early labor, their doctor was on vacation and an emergency c-section was performed by none other than Quinn Fabray, who was just visiting at the time. Rachel added Lucy to the kid's name and refused call her anything else—based on the turn of events, neither Sam nor Santana complained.

But Liv was their dignified mini-Rachel and refused to be less than proper when addressing her sister. (So help her god, if Lucy turns out to be the third Rachel in her life, she's going to consider therapy.)

"I like you. I liked Marius more because he was a cat. You're not a cat, I think you know that."

This… Okay, this is something Rachel needs to see. Santana takes two steps back and ends up on their doorway again. "_Psst!_" Rachel slowly turns to look at her, ready with an eyeroll. "Come here."

"You left in the middle of an important conversation, Santana. Let me—"

"I swear this'll shut you up," she interrupts and quickly motions her hand for Rachel to join her. "Come _here_!"

"You should really choose your words more carefully," she says, mighty pissed, but still complying and joining Santana at the door. Santana just nods and grabs her wife's hand, bringing a finger to her lips to keep quiet. She places Rachel in front of her and goes back to watching the scene over her shoulder.

"—her name is Sarah because they called a giraffe that on Animal Planet. I love Animal Planet. And this," Liv reaches over Lucy's head for a stuffed ferret, "is Scar. Mama named him Timon, but I like Scar better." Santana thinks that, even though they're genetic products of Rachel and Sam, Liv has her zero tolerance for bullshit. (They both argued that the damn thing was a ferret, not a meerkat, so she didn't _have to_ name it Timon. And Scar is badass—that's what Liv _means_, she just doesn't know the word yet.)

Santana notices that Rachel's moved a little and she looks down to see her wife's hand over her mouth, eyes so shiny they're actually reflecting the entire decoration. And damn if it doesn't make her get teary as well. They snuggle closer, never taking their eyes off their kids.

"I wish you were a turtle or a bunny, but you're like me. Your hair is darker, but I like it. And you have big eyes like a bunny. So you can be my bunny if you want." Liv grabs Lucy's hand in hers and lays down next to her, about fifteen stuffed animals between and around them. "Good night, Sophie." And it's kind of incredible how they close their eyes at the same time.

Rachel turns in her embrace and, to Santana's surprise, doesn't sob dramatically like she's been doing the whole day. She just whispers, "Thank you." It's not like she's done anything, but she kind of wants to say the same thing to someone. Maybe Marius, who knows.


End file.
